You Don’t Have to be Good: Tips on How to Write a Love Poem

Writing love poems isn’t really my thing.

This is what I’ve been telling people for years. Even when I suggested to my fellow Scugog Arts members that, as Poet Laureate of Scugog Township, I should share a blog on how to write a love poem for Valentine’s Day, it occurred to me that I might not be the best person for the job.

To be clear: I stand by this last claim but the first one—the one where I say writing love poems isn’t my thing—is categorically false. I have written love poems. Lots of them. But up until a week ago, I’d never written a love poem to someone I’m in love with, romantically. Heartbreak poems? Sure, dozens of ‘em. But my poetic expressions of romantic love are conspicuously absent from my repertoire.

Still, the title poem of my debut poetry collection, “Rebellion Box”—the poem that won The New Quarterly’s 2022 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Award—was a love poem. Just not to anyone I’ve loved. And I’ve written poems to express other kinds of love: my love for my children, notably.

Never let it be said I wasn’t open to trying new things. On paper, at least. So, to lead by example, I’ve followed my own advice on how to write a love poem and composed one. For reals. I’ll share with you, even—after I share the love poem tips.

How to Write a Love Poem: 3 Tips

1. Marry the universal and the specific.

I think the best love poems marry the universal experience of being in love with your individual feeling of being in love with a specific person. Think about your experience of being in love: the details about the person for whom you feel love—what about them attracts you? And not just physically, but what about the way they act and who they are at the core of their being attracts you? Or, what is it about the way you feel when you’re with them that’s so singular? Or even the way you feel when you’re without them?

To illustrate what I am talking about, consider these love poems—all by contemporary Canadian poets. (And all of these poems are available as printouts that you can take home when you visit Scugog Arts and buy a locally crafted gift for someone special in your life.)

Solar Eclipse

We didn’t bother to look, lost
in your bedsheets. Earlier that day,
fat bumblebees orbited the clotted
white hydrangeas. Crows and gulls called out
before the sun disappeared,
but that was normal.

What sets something apart?

I’d like us to be real, too, acknowledged
at dinner parties
if not in the headlines or history books.

Heartsong

Boy,
you’d have to squint to see those
eyes bright and
vivid like a sunset
lips that taste like sunlight
and the aroma of her
embrace like a Sunday
afternoon

—“Heartsong” from Streams that Led Somewhere (Mawenzi House) by Fareh Malik © 2022 by Fareh Malik

Love Letter in the Storage Locker

All the papers cram-dumped in boxes in haste
unstuffed, unpacked, uncrunched, unwedged this late

in life strikes the lover still.

Against one-rushed time,

the stillness opens up the past’s chest,
redisovery now recovery.

Dust puffs up. Moats materialize the old love.

Which one is realer? Then, when so much younger? No,
It’s now, warm for a moment, in the arms of a folder.

—“Love Letter in the Storage Locker” from The Widow’s Crayon Box (W.W. Norton & Co.) by Molly Peacock © 2024 by Molly Peacock.

2. Writing love poems does not have to be confined to expressing feelings of romantic love.

When I think of Valentine’s Day—even though I’ve been married for 16 years—the first person I think about is my mom. Growing up, my mother made Valentine’s Day special in small ways. A little box of candy on my breakfast plate. Heart-shaped, homebaked sugar cookies to take to school. A simple but special candlelit dinner to which my great Uncle, who lived alone, was always invited. As far as I recall, my mom brought him to our home, making the hour-plus drive to where he lived while we were at school so he could spend the afternoon and evening with us. I can remember candles lit in pink glass votives and soft light bouncing off the red-foiled wrapped chocolate hearts placed by each of our plates. I remember feeling loved, and I saw love modeled through thoughtfulness and effort, not extravagance or expense. Try to tell me this kind of love doesn’t deserve a poem. Try to tell me any sort of love is not poem-worthy.

Look at the gorgeous poem, “Baby Cerberus” by Natasha Ramoutar from her new collection Baby Cerberus (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024). This is a poem written for a dog and the love is gut-punch palpable.

BABY CERBERUS

Twice I’ve read eulogies for blood
relatives tempering the steel in my voice,
but right now I can’t pen a word for you
without waves churning inside.
I was twelve when you first appeared,
tongue lolling out the side of your mouth,
your teeth sinking into every pair of shoes,
shredding Stephen King paperbacks to confetti.
Every wrong was undone with a wolfish grin
or the begging of your puppy-dog eyes.
You were always chunky, huddled
into the curves of my body,
the vacant space of an outstretched arm,
your snout pressing against my bent knees.
But in the end, you were only flesh and fur
barely clinging to a skeletal frame, sleeping
away most days in a stupor. In this myth,
baby Cerberus curls up to Persephone,
lets her cry into his soft fur, licks her hand,
rests his three heavy heads across her lap.
I’d like to remember you like that:
a young girl’s best friend and confidant.
I am sitting on the concrete blocks where
you used to zoom up and down. Notebook
balanced on my knees, pen in hand,
I’m trying to find the words
to memorialize you. The first line
of my eulogy is this: “I would cross
the River Styx for you.” I would,
I honestly would.

3. You don’t have to be good.

Don’t worry about your poem being “good” in some amorphous, objective sense. If you don’t read poetry, you could very well be harbouring archaic notions of what good poetry can look like anyway. Don’t try to write like anyone else: write in your voice, from the heart.

My list here may seem overly simplistic, and maybe it is, but I believe that there are too many “shoulds” in the world and when it comes to poetry especially, we should go in with open eyes (so read a lot of poems!) and an open heart.

Now, about that love poem of mine…

As promised, here it is! I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, celebrating love in whatever way you want.

Tuesday night love poem

I’ve done it again    said I’d go but the warmth of home pixelates the
scratch of worn blue rug    sigh of dog    give of cracked leather
couch this lamplight spilling sweet it hums so

will you say it’s okay? say

I’m

a good friend?

say no one

can make me say

if I go you’ll go too

You Don’t Have to be Good: Tips on How to Write a Love Poem

How to Write a Love Poem: 3 Tips

BABY CERBERUS

Tuesday night love poem

What have you done for us lately?

Hollay Ghadery